III. Montezuma whatsitsname tree

It was night out. Three stars that were actually distant super-galaxies were able to generate enough light to pierce through the combination cloud and light-pollution miasma hanging over the city, but aside from that the sky was pink. It was pink in a muted, dusty sort of way, but definitely more pink than orange or yellow or red. Or heaven forbid, beige.

Inside the apartment, the television screen was on but flickered into absolute darkness once in a while. The light played out over a threadbare carpet, the paper detritus of grad school, and a blankly staring boy who looked younger than his twenty-two years as he gazed at the screen. He was hunched over with his head craned upward, and the only movement he made was his thumbs over the controller in his hands. Unpleasant shadows crawled in the space behind the television and the wall, but he couldn’t see them from his vantage point directly in front of the screen.

On the other side of the room was a couch with the remains of a textbook (it had been a rough week in Anthropomorphic Epi) and several pages covered in calculations spread in a half circle around an empty spot. The trees in the bedroom beyond were just visible through the doorway, but it was too dark to see far. There was also a large upright box next to the couch, a man standing next to it who was dressed sharply (a vest may have been involved) and a young woman who was contemplating the view in the box (there were more trees, beautifully lit and possibly larger than the ones in her bedroom, although she would not have admitted it).

************* [Earlier]
Syrea started studying in the living room so she could keep an eye on Acer. She hadn’t been able to find anything around the baseboards or anything inherently evil about the playstation, at least nothing more than Sagiliss had said one would expect.

There was still definitely something going on with it though. Whenever Acer sat down to play, the shadows crept out from the empty screen to the controller in his hands, lighting everything with an eery reverse silhouette, so that Acer’s face went pale and blue.

A few times Syrea tried getting his attention, but it took saying his name three times just to get him to turn and look at her. She started getting unnerved by how distant he was, and took to sitting on the couch, as far from the console as she could get and still be in the same room. Once in a while the screen would flicker back on and warm tones returned to Acer’s face, and he usually glanced over at her and said, “Hi!” as though surprised she was there.

One night the air started thrumming by the couch.
Syrea straightened up, staring at the air with some concern. Sagiliss had mentioned thrumming. She had not seemed to think it was likely to be a good sound.

The thrumming grew loud, then stopped, and there was now a…well, it hadn’t been there before, Syrea was positive of that. And it was not a tree, and it wasn’t a demon, which were usually the only things that could manifest inside her apartment.
Acer continued to play the game on the console. For once, the television screen was intact, but he was wearing headphones and didn’t turn around to see the large…geometric…thing that had just arrived in the living room.

A door opened. The door hadn’t been there before.

A man looked out, saw Syrea, and said, “Hullo, I have a time machine! Did you call about a Rift in Space and Time?”
“Erm,” Syrea said, articulately.
“Only I was just passing through and the instruments all went a bit overexcited so I thought I’d stop and see what was what.”
“Rift. Right. Not sure,” Syrea said. “What is that, exactly?”
“It’s my time machine,” he said. “Only it travels through space too.” He frowned. “Some bloke went and patented the name I had worked out for it, but I’d gotten all the engineering bits and pieces taken care of first, so it’s the real thing.”
“Oh,” said Syrea. She leaned to look past him through the doorway. She got off the couch and pushed past him to lean at the doorway.
“Wait—” she said, suddenly breathless, “Is that…is it?”
“Go on, say it—” He grinned.
“Is that a Montezuma cypress? Taxodium mucronatum?”
“Um…yes…”
“And you’ve got…one two three…you’ve got three redwoods AND two sequoias! Oh, that’s beautiful…but wait, what’s that? You’ve got kudzu? Why on earth do you have kudzu on board? You might as well plant grapevine, at least you get grapes then…”
“I’m working on the kudzu, okay?”

***********
“Acer, I’m going out,” Syrea said. Her boyfriend did not turn or move or give any indication he had heard her.

“And I’m going to see what’s going on with your video games before I blast them into non-existence,” she added.

He turned, and lifted one headphone. “Did you say something, hon?”

“I’m going out for a little while.”

He stared at her blankly.

“Did you want to come?” She should have asked it without exasperation, she later thought, it would have made a little more likely she might have gotten a different response. But not, realistically, that much more likely.
“No, that’s fine. You have fun,” he said, and turned back to the screen.
“When was the last time you’ve been out of the house?” she asked.
“I went out this morning,” he said.

Syrea turned to the large box sitting discreetly in the middle of the floor. She took two steps toward it, slow, consideringly, and then broke into skipping the rest of the way to the door.

“Hi,” she said. “Where are we going?”

****************

It would have appeared that she had stepped into the box and changed her mind and stepped out again, except she would have found time to change her outfit and re-braid her hair and acquired a shoulder bag she hadn’t been carrying before.

“Well,” she said, to the man who leaned against the doorway. “Thank you.”
“I guess you’ll go your way now and I’ll go mine,” he said. “Good luck with the rift.”
“Wait,” she said, as he started to close the door. “Will you stop by again some time?”
He hrmed and frowned. “You’ve got your own thing going, obviously, I don’t want to get in the way.”
“Please?”
“Maybe next year.” He flashed a brilliant and completely faked smile and shut the door, and the next moment there was no box in the room.

Syrea said, loudly, “Hi, Acer.”

Acer leaned forward very slightly. His eyes widened. There was a sudden pata-pata from his headphones and the television screen flared with orange life that died back to show an unrealistically proportioned three-dimensional character rotating in a spiral of blue light.
He grinned and took off his headphones.

“I’m going to make a TARDIS,” Syrea said, loudly, making him jump.
“Oh, I thought you went out,” Acer said.
“I did,” Syrea said.
“And now you’re back,” Acer said, smiling.

He dusted crumbs off his shorts and reached for Syrea in an intentional way, and she smiled too and danced around him, giving him a brief hug, enough to catch the tingle of dark bitter shadows that had begun to cling to him. She disengaged almost immediately. “I’ve got to work on some stuff,” she said. “Also, have you been out today?”

“Oh, yeah, I took a walk while you were gone. It was good!”
Syrea looked over at the redwood sapling that had a good view of the living room.
Your friend dropped you off fifteen seconds after you left, the sapling told her. 45 Rubisco interactions. This one didn’t go ANYWHERE.